Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi 2 (1979)
From what I’ve read of it, this one seems somewhat overrated, but it does have its moments. Apparently marketed as some sort of sequel to Dawn of the Dead in some places, these zombies aren’t quite the same as those of Romero’s universe. They’re even slower if anything, and more listless, and their facial and bodily features are not as ‘naturalistic’ as Romero’s walking dead (it’s all relative, of course). In this one, the animation of the dead goes back to older zombie lore, back to voodoo and cursed histories. Even so, it’s not really explained, and we are just left to it.
Most of the action is set on a Caribbean island Mantoul, and here we have some too-ing and fro-ing where some doctor at the end of his limits is trying to figure out what’s going on, whilst failing to take any sort of precautions against frequent cases of the reanimated dead. Throw in two couples investigating the disappearance of one of the girls’ father but being stranded by a damaged boat, and you have the main protagonists.
They are a tired lot, and the film is a little boring in places. The best acting by far comes from some brief work by the doctor’s wife (she ends up with her head skewered on a wooden splinter and gets out early), and there’s a decent enough score. The constant use of drumming when you go to island scenes is a little too close to Chinese water torture for my liking.
Having said all that, there are a number of pretty good scenes throughout – a “deserted” yacht floating into New York harbour; a definite “the one where…” moment when a zombie fights a shark that is quite amazing (how did they do that?); an eye on a stick moment; and a graveyard of ancient corpses rising; final shots where we see the world has gone down the tubes.
Overrated I think, and not in the same league as any in the original Romero trilogy, but definitely worth a watch if you aren’t too averse to unrelenting gore and zombie chomping down on the ever decreasing band of goodies.